Fourth graders were very busy this week, despite only having three days to get things done! Classes revisited their Reading Goals and reading comprehensions strategies. Students will need to continue keeping these strategies in mind and continue goal setting throughout the school year. In addition to this, students also continued to brainstorm and record Social Studies questions and divide their inquiries into "Thick" and "Thin" questions. Thin questions could be answered quickly by looking in a book or using the internet. Their thick questions are those that will need further research and discussion during our inquiry into Alberta this year.Grade fours have also been busy preparing their Student Learning Plans to be showcased at next weeks upcoming Student Led Conferences. Students have been using Pathbrite as an online portfolio tool to document finished and ongoing projects that correspond to our Exemplary Learning Framework ( PDF below). Report cards will be sent home on Monday afternoon with students. Our Student Led conferences are a time for your child to take you through their learning thus far at Connect. Conference times are Thursday, November 20th from 4pm-8pm and Friday, November 21st from 8am-1pm. There are no classes scheduled next Friday. Visiting the conferences should be flexible as your child will be responsible for touring you through their classrooms and there are no formal interviews with teachers.

In math this week, we began by reviewing our math assessment. We discussed how to improve our work. We determined that we could improve by showing our work, double checking our solutions, making sure we understand what the question is asking before trying to solve it, and carrying and borrowing with addition and subtraction. We then went over strategies for carrying and borrowing and how that relates to place value. We also received a new POW called "The Sword of Knowledge". It was awesome because it was a challenge. We got to chop off dragon's heads and tails until the dragon was slain. There were different ways to solve it and we had to figure out how many chops of our sword it took to kill the dragon. The dragon had 3 tails and 3 heads and we only had 1 sword. It wasn't easy and we really had to think. If we chopped off 1 head, 1 head would grow. If we chopped off 2 tails, 1 head would grow etc etc. Please look at the POW below. How many chops does it take for you to solve it?In science, most of us finished up our science reflection, turned it in to Edmodo, read our feedback and replied with a comment. If this is not done it is now past due!!!! We also got to do a Plant crossword puzzle. It's HARD!!!!! (Hint: Most of the solutions are on Mrs. Melville's word wall)

Love the Dragon of Knowledge problem. It really gets you thinking. We had some great conversations over dinner, and everyone (even the 16 year old in the house took a go at trying to solve it.) Problems like this evoke the rich inquiry that I love to see in math!